cooking

Mia Self

a Flickrfriend

asked me how I learnt to cook

if my mother didn't teach me.

Well, she did.

When I said she couldn't bake

I meant just that

baking.

Her cakes were like hockey pucks and I don't remember her ever making cookies

she grew up in very cosmopolitan surroundings

and everything she ever wanted was there in the shops

like in any big city

you have groups of people

who stick together

and

make their own things

In Toronto

Little Italy is full of  little short  men

strutting around like Mussolini

knocking women off the sidewalks

and just being

MCP

I know

I was the one knocked off!!!

but you can get just about anything

they have in Italy

including the cow milk jugs

that look like they are vomiting on your food!!!

LOVE those things!!!

:) :) :)

And in China Town

there are live animals there ready for slaughter

or dead ones

still looking at you

with their little beady eyes

When my oldest son went to visit my sister

she took him to the markets

and after seeing all these animals

dead and alive

he vowed to be

vegetarian

sweet boy!!

You can get lots of lovely things there

cheap

so, my Mum taught me to cook

and my Dad

on Saturdays at lunch time

when he and I were the only ones home

Mum was at work and who knows where the sister was

up in London being a London dolly bird I guess!!

:p

so Dad and I had to fend for ourselves

and we used to make all sorts of things

we used the grill (broiler) a lot

on the tiny little stove we had

 in the even tinier kitchen

that was always cold

we made Welsh rarebit

and grilled tomatoes

we fried eggs and bacon

and chips

he taught me how to cook rice for

salmon kedgeree

we used to have fun coming up with whatever we could think of

those were the days before pizza joints and take out food

if you were hungry

you cooked it!!

there was a Wimpy's on the High Street

but Dad wasn't a fast food type!!

Wimpys was/is a hamburger place where the hamburgers have tiny onion bits on them

and when I was a college we would go there and flick the onion bits off at each other!!

and the boys would squirt the ketchup and mustard bottles so hard the contents would hit the ceiling!!

If my father had known.....I would have been in big trouble

He expected better behaviour and I was a young lady

wasn't I?

He was the man who lived in the desert in Iraq
and ate cheese and jam....

and only had water to drink

so we had to too!!

he never let us forget it!!

I also learnt at school

all those wonderful stodgy English foods

that stick to your gut

brown stew

sponge puddings and custard

all sorts of cakes

that we then took home and our families had to eat.

Dark fruit cakes at Christmas

mince pies

YUMM

and I also taught myself

once I was married and had to keep us fed

I like to cook

but baking I like more

so there you have it

my life as a chef

!!

do you like to cook and bake?

(the pictures here are mine and off the net
I made the stew and the bread and the piragi and the biscotti in the bag in the dark picture!!


the cow the ducks and the kedgeree
I found through Bing!!!!)

bon appetite !!!